SuperKombat Fighting Championship will enjoy yet another special guest appearance from Hollywood, as famous actress Bai Ling will be ringside for next Saturday evening's (Mar. 7, 2015) SuperKombat World Grand Prix I event on Eurosport from Sala Sporturilor in Ploiești, Romania.

The Chinese-born is no stranger to fighting since she often trains in martial arts for her interesting movie roles.

Bai Ling is known for her work in films such as The Crow, Red Corner, Crank: High Voltage and Wild Wild West, and TV shows including Lost.

The Romanian fighter Benjamin Adegbuyi is taking on Daniel Lentie on 7th March at SuperKombat World Grand Prix I. LiverKick is offering you the translation of his SportNews interview in native language.

R: How do you feel? Are you ready?

B.A.: I feel very good. It's always a pleasure to fight in Romania, where the fans are with you, your family, and Ploiești is a great city. I feel good, I'm ready, I'm the same every time regardless of the opponent. I hope to make show.

R: Do you find it harder to fight under this pressure?

B.A.: At the level where we are, we have to be professional, and these thoughts should not affect us at all.

R: Are you superstitious?

B.A.: I have no superstition, I'm always prepared. I hope to make a great game and win by knockout.

R: Did you study your opponent?

B.A.: Unfortunately I found out quite late the opponent's name. He's a pretty good fighter, awkward, southpaw... I began to study him, we have available a week and it will not be a problem. We have a plan. I hope him to have the same fate as against Morosanu.

R: What means the SuperKombat promotion for you?

B.A.: For me it means a lot, I was discovered here. I started here, and since then every gala I have been included, I won and I did very good matches. It remains my first love, forever in my soul...

R: What advice do you have for those who want to follow in your footsteps?

B.A.: I always guided them, even on Facebook, to try not to quit. It's a pretty difficult sport, which is not sustained from the beginning, but with desire and will, seriousness, talent and a bit of luck you can get a pretty good level. So follow your dreams!

R: What are your goals for 2015? Where will you stop?

B.A.: I would like to finish undefeated again. I hope to be the best if I can. I think I could get 2nd, but depends on the matches. The ranking system is a little odd, so I also need knockouts. Certainly if I grow, I get 2nd or 3rd.

R: Did you think about MMA?

B.A.: Honestly I thought, I think I will also do a little Brazilian jiu-jitsu in parallel. It helps the stand-up fighters' mobility.

R: Who would you want to fight and who would you want to avoid?

B.A.: I wanted to fight Semmy Schilt but he withdrew. He is a man who barely lost. I wanted to see my level and I think I would have been able to beat him. I fight any opponent, I would not refuse anyone.

R: Who was your idol?

B.A.: I had no idol, but I admired Bonjasky, Aerts, Sefo and Hunt in Japan. Prior to my kickboxing start, I used to wake up at night to morning to watch them.

R: Could you fight a gym colleague?

B.A.: Honestly, I can't, but it can happen in some pyramids of the greatest promotions. If it happens so, we are professionals. But in other circumstances, I would refuse to fight with an opponent from our crew (Respect Gym).

R: What's a training day for you the SK figthers there?

B.A.: It is very complex. We wake up at 8 am, we have training, 2 hours of exhaustion. Some vomit, some faint, some have dizziness, some liver problems. After, you eat a bit, you go home and get some rest if you don't have anything else to do during the day and again at 6, training. You end at 8, you eat, watch a movie if you can, then simply fall to the bed.

If you're not in a training camp, you can manage to play soccer or go to the cinema/bowling. During the preparation only Playstation and FIFA.

R: Do you enjoy watching movies? Are you watching motivational movies?

B.A.: Yes. Well, not really. I just like good movies with great actors.

R: A message for your opponent?

B.A.: You made a mistake by accepting this fight against me, I will destroy you! Haha...

On March 14th Enfusion returns with Enfusion Live #25 live from Belgium. The event is headlined by an Enfusion World Title match at 80kg where Hicham El Gaoui looks to defend that title against Morad Salhi. Also in the card is the talented William Diender against Nordin Ben Moh, a huge 70kg battle between Harut Grigorian and Marco Pique and more.

SuperKombat is looking to kick off their 2015 in style with their first event of the year; SuperKombat World Grand Prix I in Ploiesti, Romania. The show will begin with a SuperKombat New Heroes undercard that will look to help them establish talent for future SuperKombat events. Over the years SuperKombat has developed quite a bit of talent that have made a splash on the world stage and this card serves as both a reminder and a sign of what's to come with the New Heroes fights. The main card features many of the names that SuperKombat fans have grown to know and love, including; Cristian Ristea, D'Angelo Marshall, Bogdan Stoica, Amansio Paraschiv, Andrei Stoica and Heavyweight bruiser Benjamin Adegbuyi.

The event will be broadcast, as always, on EuroSport. We'll have more for you as the event approaches.

Former It's Showtime Champion and current GLORY Light Heavyweight standout Danyo Ilunga has signed on with Croatia's Final Fight promotion. While the promotion did not release details of the contract or when he will debut, they seem excited to have Ilunga on board considering how talented he is.

Ilunga was the long-time top dog of the division until he ran into Tyrone Spong in the finals of the GLORY 9 Light Heavyweight tournament. From there he went on to defeat Michael Duut, Andrei Stoica and Ondrei Hutnik before falling to Saulo Cavalari in the GLORY 18 Light Heavyweight Contender's tournament. I don't expect him to stop competing in GLORY any time soon, though, so consider his move to FFC just in addition to that.

Final Fight's current Light Heavyweight Champion is Igor Jurkovic, which would be a potentially interesting match up down the line for FFC to make.

"We are extremely proud that we have such a big name in Final Fight Championship. I think Danyo Ilunga needs no special introduction since he is the world's best fighter in light heavyweight division and No 1 on Glory raking lists. It is also an important indicator of the reputation FFC has in the international fighting sports scene since fighters such as Ilunga fight only in top promotions,“ said the FFC President Orsat Zovko and added: “We will soon reveal more details on Ilunga's debut in the FFC and we hope it will be as soon as possible.“

It looks like Tyrone Spong's first fight back after his injury will officially be in a boxing ring. According to BoxingScene we can expect to see Tyrone Spong boxing in Germany on March 6th. Promoter Erol Cylan is in talks with Oczan Cetinkaya and Alexander Ustinov to possibly fight Spong on the card that will air on EuroSport.

While we are hoping to see Spong back to kickboxing soon and many have high hopes for his MMA career, we'll take seeing Spong back in any sport, hopefully healthy and looking strong.

Shoot Boxing is doing their next show on February 21, 2015 at the Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan. We are very glad to see Zouggari back in action after his impressive performance at the S-cup tournament, taking that fight on a days notice. It's going to be scary to see how he does with time to actually train and prepare himself properly but then again he is fighting Shishido who has a lot of experience. Also Nagashima is looking to get back into the win column after his last fight was a draw, and two losses before that, he really needs one. Overall sounds like its going to be a fun event, lets hope the judges aren't as bias as the 65kgs tournament this time.

SuperKombat has drawn a line in the sand and has chosen 2015 to be their big stand for them to build up new, big stars for the SuperKombat brand. Today was a big news day for the promotion, announcing that they will run six live World Grand Prix events this year on EuroSport, starting with their March 7th event. There will be four big Heavyweight World Grand Prix events held this year (March 7, May 23, June 19 and August 1), the Final Elimination on October 2nd and the World Grand Prix Final on November 7th.

The big news, though, is the announcement of the SuperKombat Academy concept. The concept is that SuperKombat will run a competition between 32 Heavyweights in search of the next big SuperKombat star. With a sizable investment of $5mil USD SuperKombat is looking to run a reality series and introduce these fighters on their live events, where they will test the fighters to move forward. The idea is that they will be preparing these fighters to be high level fighters and stars. The investment is to help with their training, salaries, supplements, travel and public-facing training to help make them into more complete packages.

This is a rather unique opportunity for fighters out there to live the dream in for the next three years (the length of the competition) by having SuperKombat essentially pay their bills for them and for these fighters to concentrate on training.

Yesterday Badr Hari put the Heavyweight division in kickboxing on notice with a tweet showing some of the world's top heavyweights and that they are on his radar. The thing is, there's pretty much no chance of some of these fights coming anywhere close to happening.

No one ever achieved greatness by playing it safe!! All for the win / العظمة لاتتحقق بدون المخاطرة! للفوز!! الله اكبر pic.twitter.com/Py4Mc2trO2

Pictured are five of the best heavyweights in the world in Rico Verhoeven, Daniel Ghita, Ismael Londt, Hesdy Gerges and Tyrone Spong. Also pictured is Patrice Quateron, whom no insult intended, is simply not one of the best heavyweights in the world. This is an interesting thing by his social media team to get people talking and places Quateron in the conversation among top guys. Quateron is probably the only of the six that there is a slim chance of him actually fighting, although it should be noted that they were supposed to fight late in 2014 and after Quateron insulted Badr Hari and released a recording of a phone call with Mike Passenier where Mike apparently asked for him to throw the fight the fight magically fell apart.

Look, everyone loves Badr Hari, but four of those five fighters are affiliated with GLORY, one is a Light Heavyweight overcoming an awful injury (Spong) and Londt is a possibility, but honestly Londt would be a legitimate threat to Badr Hari at this point. I expect a Quateron fight to happen at some point, but at this point it is highly suspect. We all want to see Badr Hari making the best uses of his talents, but right now it just doesn't look like it'll happen.

Kunlun's last show went down a few weekends ago, but they are splitting their shows up to Sunday broadcasts, with the next broadcast airing the B-block of their Heavyweight tournament, which features Mighty Mo, Konstantin Gluhov, Hesdy Gerges and Andrei Herasimchuk (the man that beat Rico Verhoeven).

Here is a look at the card for this Sunday courtesy of Kunlun. The show will air at 15:30 local time in China on Jiang Su TV and can be viewed via their website on Sunday.

On Saturday, February 7th in Eindhoven Enfusion is set to take the stage again with Enfusion Live #24. The Enfusion Heavyweight Championship is on the line as Ismael Lazaar will square off against Thomas Vanneste with the winner walking away with the Enfusion crown. Tune in tomorrow at 21:00 local time at EnfusionLive.com.

Orsat Zovko's promotion FFC kicks off its 2015 with another kickboxing/MMA hybrid show that will be headlined by Dzevad Poturak squaring off against Frank Munoz. This is a solid battle of Heavyweights just operating outside of the fringes of being top fighters and could easily find themselves back into the mix with a few big wins.

Poturak had retired due to injuries back in 2013 but was able to mount a successful comeback in the second half of 2014. Munoz will be a big test for the 37 year old fighter, the first big test since his official comeback.

It'a also interesting to note that FFC is technically on FFC17 but that FFC7 was originally planned for Sarajevo and was canceled, making this the FFC event that never happened initially and them now making up for it.

It's hard to argue with the sheer quality of the Kunlun cards that they are putting together in China, the next of which goes down on February 1st in Guangzhou. Kunlun 19 is shaping up to be pretty fascinating with the finals of their 70kg tournament taking place and more on their Heavyweight tournament. I'm not sure that Kunlun will be sustainable into the future, but have fun with it while it lasts because we sure as hell will be.

Here's a breakdown of what they'll be offering. The list of name talent is long, including Konstantin Ghulov, mighty Mo, Hesdy Gerges, Ashwin Balrak, Andrei Herasimchuk, Marat Grigorian, Aikpracha Meenayothin, Davit Kirita, Artur Kyshenko and more. I mean, wow. It's also fair to note that Kunlun is making an effort at getting their stuff out there in English, although it's a bit rough around the edges.

Enfusion continues to march forward with Enfusion 24 on February 7th in Eindhoven, the Netherlands with another big event. This time around the Heavyweight sensation Ismail Lazaar fights Thomas Vanneste for the Enfusion World Heavyweight Championship in what should be a very interesting bout. The rest of the card sees an interesting mix of 70kg, 66kg, 80 and 95kg fights and it's Enfusion, so as always it should deliver.

It's been a long time since we've seen Giorgio Petrosyan in the ring. In fact, I'd argue that it has been too long. The last time that we saw Petrosyan in the ring was December of 2013 when Andy Ristie was able to overcome the best fighter at 70kg via knockout. It was shocking at the time, but now we've all settled into this reality. This coming Saturday Petrosyan finally returns to the ring at Thai Boxe Mania 2015 against Erkan Varol in Turin, Italy.

The other big news is that Petrosyan's next fight is already lined up and it's going to be a big one. At Oktagon's 20th anniversary event on April 11th Petrosyan is set to face 2014 K-1 World MAX Champion Enriko Kehl in what should be an awesome bout. The young Kehl has proven himself as a worthy contender and a rising star of his own over the past few years and it will be quite the test for Petrosyan after such a long layoff.

On Friday evening AXS TV will not only be presenting Legacy FC’s first kickboxing event, Legacy Kickboxing 1, they will also be starting off their series of english broadcast New Japan Pro Wrestling events from 2013. This will mark the first time in the modern age of New Japan Pro Wrestling that an American network has not only taken interest in presenting their programming, but to do so in a respectful, exciting manner.

Sure, this isn’t kickboxing news, but the truth is that Japanese professional wrestling was at the roots of K-1 and modern kickboxing as a whole. Without Japanese pro wrestling there would be no GLORY or K-1 right now, there would have been no boom for kickboxing and we wouldn’t have grown to idolize Peter Aerts, Ernesto Hoost, Andy Hug and countless others.

New Japan Pro Wrestling is probably the best professional wrestling organization around at the moment. If you ever had any interest in professional wrestling but found the offerings of WWE to be a bit too hokey or childlike for you and simply gravitated towards MMA and other “real” sports instead, I urge you to check out what AXS TV is going to be presenting this Friday.

New Japan was not always the best that Japan had to offer, with All Japan being the king of the 90’s, NOAH being the king of the early 00’s but New Japan’s younger talent from the early 00’s matured into some of the best talents ever seen on this stage and the action is simply divine. New Japan Pro Wrestling is based on what they call “strong style.” Strong Style is basically whatever style of pro wrestling that New Japan is dabbling in, but its roots are based on martial arts due to the founder Antonio Inoki’s obsession with the concept of the “mixed fight.” It doesn’t hurt that Inoki is one of the fathers of modern MMA, either, with most of those early MMA fights taking place in a New Japan ring.

The action tends to be brutal, the storytelling takes place inside of the ring and while there is still big characters, elaborate costumes and other basics of pro wrestling, things tend to feel a bit more “real” and exciting. It won’t feel remarkably different to the average viewer as much as it will feel alien, but that is where Mauro Ranallo and Josh Barnett come into play. AXS TV’s series is set to span the epic saga of the IWGP Title in 2013, which saw struggles between Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchida Okada. The first episode kicks off with Tanahashi vs. Okada from January 4th, 2013 this Friday evening before Legacy Kickboxing is set to kick off. So you’ll be there anyway, just show up an hour earlier for an awesome hour of pro wrestling.

AXS TV sent us the third episode of New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV, which was the April 7th main event between Tanahashi and Okada, a rematch that saw Dave Meltzer of the WON praise it as a five-star classic, the match of the year. It’s truly the pinnacle of that style of pro wrestling and a tremendous match, so it speaks for itself, but Ranallo and Barnett were able to do it justice in a way that we haven’t seen in a long time.

On January 4th of this year Global Force Wrestling helped to distribute the annual NJPW Tokyo Dome event, Wrestle Kingdom 9, with Matt Striker and Jim Ross on commentary. Ross and Striker were good, but they were tossed together for the first time and some things simply didn’t mesh. The team of Ranallo and Barnett had none of these problems and were able to add historical context and personal insights without having to start relating to the WWE or other domestic products.

There is a level of immersion that comes with this, which is aided by Ranallo’s wrestling knowledge and A+ research that goes into calling each show and Barnett’s personal history in Japan. Barnett competed in Japan for years in MMA and also spent time training in professional wrestling before wrestling under the New Japan Pro Wrestling banner for a while. So it’s safe to say that what Barnett adds is his own personal experiences in the grueling training that New Japan wrestlers go through and how they perform in the ring. Hell, he’s even been in the ring with a lot of these guys and knows them personally.

We can -- for the most part -- ignore the pretty awful ad that was produced for the series and is airing on AXS TV, because the program itself is extremely well done. In this episode it began with interviews with the wrestlers, helping to set up the match a bit more, then the meat of the match (which was a long one, took up the entire program), followed by a post-match interview. It wasn’t the kind of thing that I’d expect for what is just an hour-long program that could have easily been slapped together for cheap and tossed on air.

Definitely tune in for this -- or at least set your DVR for it -- because it’s definitely worth watching.

Mike Zambidis captured the SuperKombat Middleweight Championship back in August of 2013 against Harun Kina in Romania and now in January he is set to defend that title for the very first time in a return match. At an Iron Challenge 2015 event in Greece Zambidis is set to defend that title against Kina. If you are wondering why it isn't on a SuperKombat card proper, that's because 2015 will be the year that SuperKombat begins licensing out their brand to interested partners.

Previously they would license out tryout events, but starting this year they will also license out Elimination and World Title fights. The SuperKombat season begins on March 7th with their first event of this season, but look for more events held around the world with fights that impact the world of SuperKombat throughout the year. We'll have more on SuperKombat and Mike Zambidis when it's available.

In exactly one week Legacy Kickboxing 1 is set to go down live from Houston, Texas. The event will be airing live on AXS TV at 10pm Eastern time. The main event features muay thai and kickboxing veteran Cosmo Alexandre squaring off against Regian Eersel. The co-main is UFC and GLORY veteran Pat Barry taking on Demoreo Dennis with Barry looking to get back into the win column after a disappointing debut with GLORY in May.

New Year's Eve in Japan has been a tradition in combat sports for years now. Sadly, after the fall of FEG we've seen very little in the way of what we used to get with the huge Dynamite!! events in Japan. The days of Kakutougi being king in Japan have come and gone, but that doesn't mean that people don't try.

There were a handful of events in Japan today, with the bigger ones being run by DEEP and Inoki Genome Federation. IGF featured the bigger names like Cro Cop, Satoshi Ishii, Shinya Aoki, Josh Barnett (pro wrestling, not MMA) and even hosting Fedor Emelianenko and Wanderlei Silva as special guests. The story coming away from the event is that Mirko Cro Cop finished Satoshi Ishii with a left head kick to knock him off balance then following up with a flurry of punches to put him down and out.

This means that Mirko Cro Cop begins 2015 by holding onto the IGF World Championship.

If you've been paying attention to kickboxing, you'll probably recognize that 2014 has been a strange year for the sport. We started things off with GLORY as the clear #1 promotion in the world, with the top talents, biggest events and the most promise. As we enter into 2015 things are a bit more muddy and confusing. In fact, they are a lot more confusing.

GLORY 19 is in February, featuring Rico Verhoeven vs. Errol Zimmerman for the GLORY Heavyweight Championship, but to say that things seem to be in disarray in the GLORY camp is an understatement. The postponement of the show raised a lot of eyebrows and now we are seeing more and more GLORY contracted fighters taking fights somewhere else, or, like Joe Valtellini, petitioning for a shot at the UFC against CM Punk. I wouldn't count GLORY out just yet, but at the same time, if we look at the upcoming Kunlun and Wu Lei Feng cards in China, it's hard not to notice the sheer amount of GLORY talent on those cards.

This is kind of revealing. In addition to that, on K-1's USA vs. China event happening in China on January 1st the #1 contender for GLORY's Featherweight Championship, Gabriel Varga, will be fighting with GLORY's blessing. K-1 also announced a huge partnership with some of the biggest networks in China for ten live events in 2015. While it isn't clear if K-1 will be making big money from that just yet, the potential viewership for them is out-of-this-world.

As of right now it is looking like China is making huge moves to be the new home of kickboxing and could potentially be the "new" Japan, possibly even ushering in a boom period. We'll just have to wait and see.

This is one of those weird, only-in-kickboxing types of stories. Darko Milicic, former NBA player, made his kickboxing debut in an exhibition on Wednesday in Serbia, fighting under the WKA banner. There was some fanfare and hype around it, considering his profile, but WKA's global presence isn't quite what it's cracked up to be.

Anyway, he made his debut and things didn't go so well for the awkwardly tall basketball player when the doctors stopped it after a cut opened up on his shin.

Rico Verhoeven is supposed to fight Errol Zimmerman at GLORY 19 in February, so we still don't have a time or date, but it is interesting to learn that he'll be fighting for another promotion in China on January 4th. Rico Verhoeven will be fighting on January 4th for Khunlun Fight 15, as well as Andy Souwer, Murthel Groenhart and many others. While we don't have a full card just yet, what we know thus far is exciting;

Enfusion is back this weekend with Enfusion Live #23 in Antwerp, Belgium local time start 21.00. The main event will be a 67kgs World Title fight between Ilias Bulaid and Zahid Zairov. We also get to see Iman "Pretty Killer" Barlow back in action which is always a treat. Watch the event at www.enfusionlive.com

WGP Kickboxing in Brazil plan to close out 2014 with a bang with WGP #24 on December 20th featuring some of their biggest stars competing at the highest level. WGP has taken to streaming their events of late on internet PPV for cheap, which means that you should be able to catch the event on LiverKick on December 20th.

The big fight is featuring GLORY standout Alex Pereira, who is set to square off against Ivan Galaz. Also on the card will be Felipe Micheletti against Toni Milanovic. There will also be a one-night Grand Prix for the 71.8kg title, featuring Bruno Gazani vs. Ravy Brunow and Weber Shrek vs. San Martino.

Top King World Series will be holding their Final 8 event at the Asia World Expo in Hong Kong on December 20th at 23:30 (UTC +7 Thailand) and will be broadcast on Mordern 9 TV Thailand. So far the first two shows they have done to determine who the final 8 would be have been nothing short of amazing. Now we are down to all the top name guys and we get to see the fights that we have been waiting for. The tournament match ups have yet to be announced but the participants and super fights are here for you too look forward too. It's Great to see them bringing in more fighters from Thailand to introduce to the World.

There’s a belief in the fight community that when you go to Japan that you need to be prepared for anything. You could say that for any fighter going into another country where they are to fight local fighters they have their backs against the wall and fear the “hometown decision,” but in Japan it always seems amplified. A part of that is the marriage of professional wrestling and professional fighting that has existed for a very long time in the world of “kakutougi.”

In fact, if you were to look at Shoot Boxing’s S-Cup event there was a professional wrestling bout on the card featuring New Japan Pro Wrestling Junior Heavyweight sensation Kota Ibushi against former DDT Pro Wrestling colleague Michael Nakazawa. It was originally labeled as an “exhibition match” under Shoot Boxing rules and was scheduled to be against Kazushi Sakuraba, but that fell through thanks to Metamoris 5.

That should set the tone for you.

This S-Cup was one of the few that I’ve seen more than the usual fans excited over, which was in part due to the card that they put together. Mosab Amrani, Pornasae, Hiroaki Suzuki, Michiko Omigawa, Hiroki Shishido and American Muay Thai fighter Kevin Ross were all a part of the tournament, while legend Andy Souwer and Shoot Boxing hero RENA were in Super Fights.

It felt like one of the bigger shows that Shoot Boxing had put on in a very, very long time and then Shoot Boxing went and put on a shameful display for all of the world to see.

The draw for American fans was muay thai standout Kevin Ross being in the tournament. Ross went into the tournament against his toughest test by the way of former Sengoku, DREAM and UFC alumnus Michihiro Omigawa. Omigawa was a champion Judoka who rose to prominence in the Japanese MMA scene and after his UFC stint gave a shot at Shoot Boxing. Much like Toby Imada in the past, his grappling skills were able to help him against seasoned kickboxers and 2014 was his second attempt at Shoot Boxing gold.

By all accounts Omigawa was winning the first round handily thanks to his throws, which score heavily under Shoot Boxing rules, but there was a clash of heads that led to a nasty cut on Omigawa's face. In the second round the cut was a major factor, leading the ref to stopping the bout. The referee awarded the fight in favor of Ross due to the stoppage, while backstage there was a different story and Shoot Boxing organizers informed Ross that the fight was being rendered a No Contest and that he would not continue on in the tournament.

The rules are a bit unclear at a time like this, where it isn’t clear who was at fault, or if it was accidental. What the referee most likely saw and ruled was that the cut was due to Omigawa’s own “negligence” (section 10) and ruled it in favor of Ross. Shoot Boxing might have been arguing that it was due to both men, which would make things a lot muddier. The truth of the matter is, the referee awarded Ross the win in the ring and any time the decision is reversed backstage it will be a tough sell to anyone that it was on the up-and-up.

If that wasn’t frustrating enough, then there is the story of Zakaria Zouggari. Don’t know who Zakaria Zouggari is? Neither did we, but we sure as hell know now. Rob Emerson of MMA fame (fame?!) was scheduled to take part, but at the last minute was unable to secure a visa, which left Shoot Boxing in a bind and called up relative unknown Zakaria Zouggari to fill in for Emerson in a reserve bout.

Zouggari defeated Shoot Boxing’s resident punching bag Bovy Sor. Udomson via cut stoppage in round two and, thanks to the Kevin Ross/Omigawa shenanigans, was called upon to fight in the tournament moving forward.

That led to a fight with internationally-renowned Houcine Bennoui and for this amazing display.

Seriously. God damn.

So this unknown would move onto the finals. According to Andy Souwer after the event Zouggari literally got off of the plane, dropped his bag off in his hotel room then hopped on a bus and headed to the event without time to rest, eat or get acclimated. This was the man who went on to the finals against 2013 65kg S-Cup Champion Hiroaki Suzuki. This is where things went from bad to worse. Zouggari clearly had the fight won after three rounds, only for an extension round to be ordered. When that was too close a SECOND extension round happened where Suzuki was finally able to score a TKO over Zouggari and it looked like Shoot Boxing’s hand-picked champion had won again.

It was almost like they weren't trying to hide the favoritism and that they really, really wanted Suzuki vs. Omigawa in a rematch of last year's finals.

We are proud to announce that much like the last WGP Kickboxing event, kickboxing fans will be able to tune in this weekend live via LiverKick and to help support the kickboxing world by purchasing the live stream of WGP 23. If you haven't checked out WGP before this is a great chance to and there are some solid names on the card that if you haven't seen before you'll be happy that you watched, for sure.

The event starts at 19:00 GMT-3 on Saturday. Check out the full card here.

Okay, so the S-cup is on this weekend, it starts on Sunday at 13:00 in Japan which is Saturday at 23:00 EST or 20:00 PST. Finally it's at a decent hour for us to watch, except to order it we have to decode NicoNico tv and most of us here in North America cannot read Japanese. The difference this time is that Kevin Ross in taking part who is American which will make more of us want to watch.

The easiest way to do this is use Google chrome and use the translate button (right beside the favourties star) to just translate the site one page at a time, But we have also decided to to a step by step for people that need a little help.

- Step 5 - A box will come up that says you dont have enough points once again click the red/pink button and it will take you to a terms and conditions page, Scroll down and click the Yellow Button at the bottom and you will be at this page.

This page is asking how many points you want to buy, the shootboxing event is either 1300 or 1500 so u will need to click on 2000, which costs 2000 Yen, which is 16.99 USD.

- Step 5 - once you have clicked the 2000 you will be at this page where it asks to click all sorts of payment methods that we don't know, just scroll down to the Visa one

One more screen will pop up confirming the 2000 points for 2000 Yen, just click the yellow button and transaction is complete. Now you have the points on your account u can go back to the first Link https://secure.live.nicovideo.jp/event/shootboxing and click red button to buy the ticket and it should go through nicely. If the you preorder the fights it costs 1300 Yen, if u wait its 1500 Yen.

The Blade1 show will be taking place on December 29th at the Ota City General Gymnasium on December 29th in Tokyo, Japan. The card will consist of a 61 kgs tournament as well as quite a few superfights with well known names.

Zabit Samedov will be back in action facing Japan's Uehara Makoto should be a good for fight for Samedov I'd imagine. Slovenian Samo Petje fresh off his KO over Hinata will be facing another big Japanese name in Yasuhiro Kido, I have a feeling this will be fight of the night because Kido won't be going down without a fight. Next we have Hinata taking on the Cos-Play king Nagashima, I am very curious about this fight, it's all going to come down to who can avoid the others strengths. If Nagashima can get past Hinata's left kick and land any one of his powerful punches I feel he could finish him, otherwise Hinata is just going to kick him non-stop all fight.

On November 29th WGP Kickboxing returns to action with WGP #23, a night that will feature a 64.5 kg GP with some awesome talent. The big name that stands out for me is Marcus Vinicius, but Bereta, Falcao and Djavan all bring a lot to the table themselves. The event will be streaming live on the 29th via their website as well as here for $5.